Is Bopro CO2 neutral?

The last push for Bopro to become ‘CO2 neutral’ will be taken together with CO2logic. Despite many efforts, as a company you continue to be responsible for the remaining (read: non-reducible) CO2 and the impact on the climate that you have as an organisation.

For years already, Corporate Social Responsibility has been engrained in Bopro’s activities, mission, business model, products and services. Thus in 2009, Bopro charted its ecological footprint for the first time on the basis of measurements. Based on the information gathered at the time, Bopro set itself the goal of becoming a CO2 neutral organisation by 2020.

Within the organisation, this decision meant raising and increasing awareness of amongst other things the consumption and use of energy and gas. The sustainable renovation of our head office turned it into a CO2 neutral building. Additional attention was paid to insulation, geothermal, water recovery, LEDs, etc. Since the renovation, use has also been made of renewable energy produced locally by Ecopower.

Naturally, the recommendations and changes to the mobility policy for employees also fit in this context. Bopro has traditionally promoted the use of train and bicycle. The introduction of the STOP principle can also be explained by this. Where necessary, the Bopro employees have folding bicycles at their disposal. The entire fleet of vehicles was also replaced, which immediately led to a quick drop in the amount of CO2.

Despite these intensive efforts to reduce the CO2 within our organisation, we can see that we still have a long way to go before we can really go through life as a CO2 neutral organisation.

One way to reduce our remaining CO2 to zero is through compensation. To this end, Bopro is cooperating with CO2logic. This organisation invests in social-economic projects in Uganda, Burkina Faso and Benin. The stove project not only improves the health and living conditions of the local population, but it also helps to counter further deforestation of the region. By giving the local population access to these ‘healthy’ stoves, the release of polluting and harmful substances in local households is greatly reduced, leading to an increase in the general health situation. These new stoves reduce the consumption of wood and coal by some 40%. In this way, each new stove leads to a reduction of 1.4 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Bopro’s CO2 emission in 2015 was calculated to be 54 tonnes of CO2. Based on these emissions, Bopro is participating in the CO2logic project to compensate for its CO2 emissions until 2020. In concrete terms this means 38 stoves.

Despite the fact that Bopro as of today can already go through life as a CO2 neutral organisation, the efforts to further reduce our own CO2 emissions will continue unabated within the organisation.

In order to achieve the Affordable & Clean Energy – UN Global Goal, we will on the one hand focus on further reducing our energy consumption by increasing the awareness and efficiency of both our employees and our clients. And on the other hand within this context we will continue to focus on topics such as well-being & health, water, biodiversity, pollution, etc.